Man, we wish we hadn’t used this headline up two days ago.
BBC Scotland’s Debate Night programme last night was rather peculiar. It took place in a mostly-empty studio, but clearly not due to COVID precautions because the people who were there were all jammed tightly together in the middle. (In fairness, given BBC Scotland’s audience ratings they may still have outnumbered television viewers.)
On an all-female panel it featured, “by popular demand”, someone presenter Stephen Jardine described as “one of our best-loved comedians”, a former electrician called Susie McCabe, who we’d never heard of in our lives. (She apparently presented the channel’s Hogmanay show, something no sane adult has watched since 1982.)
She made one particular contribution that set social media aflame.
Because as someone else on Twitter mocked, what’s actually laughable is the idea that criminals would never engage in any kind of deception in order to commit crimes, and that someone like Peter Tatchell would be so idiotic as to suggest such a thing.
We’ve asked Alex Cole-Hamilton for comment several times without reply. (Although there has been an unverified third-hand answer via Willie Rennie and a Twitter user.)
Wings Over Scotland makes absolutely no assertions about why MSPs wouldn’t want to very clearly and unambiguously disassociate themselves from such an unpleasant character after information about him had been brought to light in a widely-read (over 200,000 views) article which was trending on Twitter all day yesterday.
For the avoidance of doubt, we have no information about any interactions between Douglas and any MSPs that we’re keeping secret. But we’re not the least bit surprised that people have started wondering what possible reasons a whole string of male politicians could have for not wanting to upset a male prostitute, particularly given the long and sordid history of male politicians and male prostitutes in the UK.
To quash such speculation, we once again urge all MSPs who have associated with Beth Douglas to clearly and publicly disavow him and assure voters that he will no longer shape or influence legislation passed in the Scottish Parliament.
Last week he was prominent in a protest outside Queen Elizabeth House against the UK government’s S35 intervention over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. He spoke alongside MSPs including Patrick Harvie, Karen Adam, Ross Greer, Paul Sweeney and Alex Cole-Hamilton, who lavished fulsome and effusive praise on him, going so far as to say that it was for Douglas personally that MSPs had pushed the bill through.
Wings will have a major article related to the subject dropping tomorrow morning, put together in conjunction with The Glinner Update. Please do tune in from 8am.
Our sinister network of shadowy agents informs us that the document below has just been sent by Murray Foote to all SNP Parliamentarians. (Click to enlarge.)
It would appear that the SNP is feeling some heat.
The final result of our Twitter poll from yesterday was pretty conclusive.
(It was also by a distance the biggest response we can ever remember getting for one – normally our Twitter polls get around 3,000 votes.)
But of course Twitter polls aren’t scientific – they’re self-selecting and they draw from a biased sample, in this case people who follow Wings and are more likely to agree with us on most things. So we need a bit more data for a better picture.
The recently-restored Wings Twitter account has a little over 56,000 followers, the vast bulk of them accumulated at a time when this site had far less reason to criticise the SNP or the Scottish Government. So while this poll isn’t scientific, the indy-friendly nature of the respondent base makes it pretty interesting.
Those numbers closely mirror what every actual proper poll tells us about Scottish people’s opinion of the GRR itself – they oppose it by margins of between 3:1 and 4:1. So if the Scottish Government is counting on the UK’s intervention to increase support for independence, frankly it looks like they’re onto a massive loser.
…by which we mean “IQs in the history of the Scottish Parliament”.
Put a cushion on your desk before you start listening to this, gang, or you might hurt your jaw. Because surely nobody quite as paralysingly, catastrophically thick as this clueless, bumbling, deranged and dangerous imbecile has ever been allowed to make the laws of Scotland before. We wouldn’t let her make orange squash, to be honest.
And yes, we’re including Kezia Dugdale and Jamie Greene in that reckoning.
